Archive for August, 2013

August 16, 2013

The Social Media Landing Page – The Underutilized Page You’ll Kick Yourself For Not Having

The Social Media Landing Page – The Underutilized Page You’ll Kick Yourself For Not HavingGuest post by Tommy Walker from Inside the Mind.I’m going to take a huge leap of faith here and suggest that people who click your bio link from social media platforms are more valuable than your average visitor.Crazy notion right?I like something you say in the busiest information exchange known to man & decide to investigate and learn more about you and you have to offer.So please, please tell me, why aren’t most of us send these genuinely curious visitors to where traffic goes to die – the homepage?It seems to me these visitors specifically should have the red carpet rolled out, and treated with the utmost care on a social media landing page.Because you know, clicking the bio link is not something people just do every day.At the core of your “social media landing page” page is a serious consideration of why your visitor comes to this page in the first place.Perhaps, “rolling out the red carpet” is an exaggeration. But when you take into account that a bio link is typically 2-3 clicks away from the normal feed & the visit is typically triggered by you sharing something truly thought provoking or of genuine interest (not some overhyped click-bait link), it makes sense you should be putting your best foot forward.Imagine the “bio clicker” is a big ticket lead who’s flown in to visit your office for the first time. Etiquette dictates you’ll give them a tour of the building and an overview of the services most relevant to their needs.That feeling – the introduction of a brand that can be trusted and is worth the visit – that’s what should be at the soul of your “social media landing page” page.You don’t want to give away too much and cause overwhelm, rather just enough to get people excited to learn more about what you’re doing.It’s all about the scent of information as they call it in User Experience, and it’s about delivering information that syncs up with their intent as much as possible.Matching that scent isn’t as hard as it sounds.If you take a second to think about it, it’s safe to assume different social media sites refer different kinds of traffic.

Facebook & Google+, by nature of their design, are more likely to generate discussion driven content, (See Dan Zarella’s Science Of Facebook) so the content on your “Coming From Facebook/Google+” pages could be focused on starting conversations or sparking debate.

Traffic coming from Facebook

Twitter might be a better match for more “sharable” content with attention grabbing headlines and well designed images. Looking at the top articles here on Social Mouths, the most frequently shared articles on Twitter usually contain infographics or colored graphs w/ easy to digest analysis.

Linkedin is an obvious match for lead generation style content. Whitepapers, .Pdfs,  Slideshare presentations are a natural choice for the LinkedIn landing page. Given the nature of the traffic, it would also be perfectly acceptable to include a email form, or even better call tracking service (detailed below) on this social landing page. Testimonials should also be strongly featured on the “Coming From Linkedin Page”

Traffic coming from LinkedIn

(not an actual SocialMouths page)Pinterest users might be interested in visual content.Instagram, more personal, photo driven content and so on and so on.Of course, this is a general analysis. However, the importance of analyzing your visitors from different traffic sources can’t be stressed enough.You’re not just creating a better experience for your curious byline visitor, but you’re maximizing your overall content efforts to extend the shelf life of older articles beyond the hyperactive social media lifecycle.

Beyond that, if you’re tracking which content gets the most clicks from these pages, you’ll receive very valuable data on what style content works best on the different social media channels in the future.

As a general rule, you should do your best to include an optin form to a relevant email autoresponder on your social media pages.If you’re an Aweber user like me, I’d recommend using a service like AWProtools to send extremely relevant emails well after your visitor consumes the ethical bribe (like the Facebook Tabs Mini Course). In a lot of ways, my emails act like a “choose your own adventure” novel, where the subscriber strongly influences what ends up in their inbox.For example, once the Facebook mini course is over, I send an email that provides a handful of options asking what they’d like to learn about next, like Facebook Marketing, Twitter Marketing, Linkedin Marketing.If they click on the Twitter link, they’ll automatically be switched to a “Twitter Marketing” autoresponder designed to inform & tune the lead into the “Twitter Marketing” problem. Eventually the autoresponder  promotes a service designed to solve that problem, while meanwhile anyone who clicked on Facebook or Linkedin from that same email is undergoing a similar process to solve a problem more relevant to their needs.

Email Marketing Map

(another example of the email forking strategy: image credit)

This “Email Forking” strategy allows you to reduce irrelevance in your emails over time, resulting in higher open rates, click throughs and ultimately sales. Another thing about AWProtools I like, is that if they don’t click on anything by the time they reach the end of the first autoresponder, they’ll automatically move to my “broadcast only” list, so they don’t just get lost forever.

However, understanding that a large percentage of your visitors may not be interested in parting with their email address, including your phone number on the “Coming From Social Media” page is a way to capture additional leads and deliver an even better user experience.BUT WAIT?! If someone calls in, won’t you lose all that juicy analytics data? Nope.Call marketing tools  like RingRevenue.com allow you to generate unique phone numbers for every visitor that come to your site. Once they call in, their online analytics data will be tied to their phone number, and the call data, including details such as referring keyword, social media landing page, and other caller demographics can be integrated into contact management services like Salesforce.com.Knowing what pages your inbound call leads are visiting will become extremely useful to your overall content strategy, as you’ll be able to create content and update key pages to include frequently asked phone questions, future blog posts, and future email marketing efforts.

Ring Revenue

Call tracking of course doesn’t have to be limited to the “Coming From Social Media” page, and can be integrated throughout your entire site, however the ability to segment out social media phone leads vs. all others will help you to better track the effectiveness of your social media efforts. (e.g. Higher call volume after participating in a # chat on Twitter, or tracking the effectiveness of a video campaign.)Doing a book signing? Speaking in a new city or at a big conference? Hosting a virtual event?If someone’s taken the time to click through your social media profile, why not give them a quick run down of where they can get more of you in the very near future?That bio link click is a very powerful indicator they’re interested in what you’re doing, so tastefully give them a way to get more.Event CalendarBonus points: Use a behavioral targeting area through a service like Visual Website Optimizer to show only local events to people within that specific geographic region.Extra Credit: If you’re one of those people with an exceptionally hectic schedule, you may also consider embedding a calendar widget in this area for a visitor to book a time. This way you can capture emails, phone numbers, and a commitment to talk.In doing research for this article, I realized that the social media landing page isn’t anything new. But I am genuinely surprised I don’t see more of it.Search Engine Land wrote an article about this strategy back in 2010 called “The Anatomy Of A Great Social Media Landing Page.” The article stresses the point that social media landing page conversion isn’t about capturing leads so much as it is about converting visitors to various kinds of brand ambassadors.While it’s talking about using social pages for customers, I’d like to adapt two of it’s main social landing page conversions to make our bio link clicker feel more at home:This kind of conversion is probably the easiest to grasp, as it is conversion in the traditional sense.However, instead of going straight for the “Sign up for free trial” straight away – use prepackaged videos, eBooks, or some other educational component which can be “bought with a tweet” or share.Even if your curious bio visitor doesn’t become a customer, they end up sharing your content & generating social proof in the process, which according to Hubspot, makes prospects 71% more likely to buy.The strongest things you can do in marketing is develop messaging that simultaneously attracts the right people to you while repelling the wrong people away.With this kind of conversion, you’d be looking to include tweets, testimonials & comments along with strong opinion/ethos based content to show visitors they belong (or don’t)An example of this might be featuring articles like “4 Marketing Methods More Powerful Than Advertising” or “Why The How To Article Is Dead” with very visible share numbers as well as comments or tweets that support the overall philosophy.(not an actual Social Mouths page)The idea is to curate very specific content on this page to create a vibe that lets your visitor feel “at home” and with a tribe that supports their point of view.For some, this might provide the exact opposite vibe, but if we’re being realistic, those probably aren’t the people clicking on your bio links either.To reiterate what I’ve been saying all along, when someone clicks on your bio link, it really means something.Entertain the possibility they’re addicted to your words like meth addicts – and social media just ain’t scratching that itch anymore.Use this page to cultivate a sense of belonging, and use what you know about the referring social network to send people down a rabbit hole to get them bonded to your content.I’m curious, now that you’ve seen the strategy, how would You feel if someone took the extra time to build one of these pages for you?Is there anything else you’d like to see included in the social media landing page?Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

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August 16, 2013

5 Ways to Repurpose Existing Blog Posts

5 Ways to Repurpose Existing Blog PostsGuest post by Shanna Mallon from Straight North.You won’t be blogging long before you realize writing regular content takes a lot of regular work—but when you feel like throwing in the towel, don’t.Figure out how to blog more efficiently instead. Consider these five ways to make the most of your blogging efforts by repurposing your existing posts!It’s Marketing 101 to publish an email newsletter to an opt-in list of subscribers—but if you’ve been running a newsletter for a long time, you know it’s easy to run out of ideas for new content. What should you do? Consider this: Your archives are a goldmine of newsletter ideas. Think about it. Many of your subscribers are newer readers who haven’t seen old posts, and even long-time readers forget content from several years ago. Take an old post and tweak it to be relevant and updated for today, and turn that into your email body. Another idea is to craft a new article for the bulk of your newsletter but link to archived posts in the second section.If you’ve been blogging awhile, you’ve likely built up a large body of content that could easily be reformatted into an ebook. Find a common theme or storyline and pull all relevant posts together, along with a decent chunk of new content, and you have a packaged product you can sell or give away.Highlight past content by creating list-style posts or pages that group together related entries. You might create a blog page that features all your posts on search engine optimization (SEO), for example, or you might post a recap post at the end of each month that highlights everything you’ve covered in the last 30 days. In either case, you’re drawing readers back to archived content and giving old posts fresh life.As all brands know by now, social media is a powerful tool for highlighting content—but that includes more than just new content; you can use social media to highlight past content, too. Here are some ideas:Throwback Thursdays: Made popular on social sites like Instagram, Throwback Thursdays encourage users to post old photos on social media. Why not take the same idea and apply it to blog content? Make Throwback Thursdays a feature on your Facebook page, where you link to old posts.Tweet Old Posts: For bloggers with WordPress-based sites, installing the free plugin “Tweet Old Post” is an easy, convenient way to draw eyes to old content. It takes only a few minutes to install and customize, and then the plugin automatically pulls together your old articles and features them on Twitter.Pin Your Pictures: Pin images from your posts to Pinterest, writing a short, interesting description after each one.Recap Your Story on Facebook or Twitter: Post the main points from a blog post to a social site like Facebook or Twitter, point by point.Just because a piece of content starts online doesn’t mean it needs to stay there. The fact is, blog content provides an excellent foundation for offline materials, from presentations to marketing pamphlets to training manuals. Take a look at the content you’ve already posted, and ask yourself what offline uses it might serve. Since the content is already written, all you have to do is pull it and repurpose it.

Take the above tips to heart, and you can turn hours of blogging into more than blog posts. Yet these ideas only scratch the surface of ways to repurpose old articles—What other ideas have you tried? When it comes to recycling blog content, the more ideas, the better, so share your best blogging efficiency tips here!

Photo credit: Mike Bailey-Gates.

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August 15, 2013

Social Media Tools: How to Simplify Your Social Media Marketing

By Michael Stelzner
Published August 9, 2013 Printer-Friendly

Are you looking for a better way to manage your social activities?

Are you wondering what tools can help your social media marketing?

To discover free or low-cost tools to simplify your social media marketing, I interview Ian Cleary for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

Social Media Marketing Podcast w/ Michael Stelzner

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Ian Cleary, the founder of Razor Social—a blog dedicated to social media tools. He’s also the social media tools writer for Social Media Examiner.

Ian shares why as a marketer you should look beyond Google Analytics and Facebook Insights data.

You’ll learn the services available to keep up to date with relevant content and the tools to use to monitor your overall activities across all social channels.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show:

How did you become interested in social media tools?

Ian explains how his history working for software companies and his very strong technology background led him to social media.

When he started to look at all of the key influencers around social media, he soon realized the social media tools niche was perfect because nobody owned that space.

razor social Razor Social filled a gap in the market for social media tool information.

Listen to the show to hear how Ian is amazed by the number of tools in development.

Why you should look beyond Google Analytics and Facebook Insights data

Ian states that although Google Analytics is useful, it doesn’t track things such as what’s happening on social media related to Twitter or LinkedIn. And the Facebook analytics tool is a little too complicated for many people.

One free tool that Ian recommends is LikeAlyzer, which is a very simple Facebook analytics tool.

likealyzer home page LikeAlyzer is a great tool to help measure the success of your Facebook Pages.

It evaluates your Facebook Page and will give you a score out of 100. You’ll then receive some basic recommendations on what to improve.

Listen to the show to find out what other amazing recommendations it will reveal.

Tools to help marketers keep up with news and content they may want to share

Ian explains why there is a lot of activity in this area. The two tools that Ian likes to use on a day-to-day basis are Feedly and Scoop.it.

Feedly is a website that allows you to read a selection of posts from any blogs you subscribe to. When you log in, you will see the latest posts. It has a really nice user interface.

feedly home page Feedly is an easy way to keep up to date with your news.

You can access the content through the web and your mobile device. It also integrates with Buffer app. You’ll discover how this can help you with your social media workflow.

Another advantage of Feedly is you can group the sites you subscribe to. You’ll hear Ian explain the benefits of this and how he groups his.

The integration of Feedly and Buffer saves marketers a lot of time.

Another tool to help you discover content is Scoop.it. You can follow people on Scoop.it to find relevant content. You can then add this content to one of your boards.

It’s not only a great way to find content, but also for others to help create it for you.

discover scoop it You can use Scoop.it to follow people or boards relevant to your niche.

Scoop.it is similar to Feedly in terms of the collection of content, except it’s based around people who pick the content for you. You’ll discover how to find the right people to follow and the most popular boards around your niche.

Ian shares what replacement he uses for Digg and why it’s a good source of content.

Ian uses a tool within Facebook called Post Planner. It shows you trending content and what’s been shared the most. You can then select content and add it to your Facebook Page.

post planner home page With Post Planner, you can see what’s been shared the most.

Listen to the show to hear about how LinkedIn has invited authorities to blog on their website.

What free or paid tools would you recommend to help marketers get a good feel for their overall social activities across all channels?

One of the tools that Ian uses is Mention.net. There is a free section and a paid section. Ian advises you to start off with the free section. Mention.net monitors the mentions of keywords across the web, which could be your brand name or product name.

mention net You can monitor any keyword in real time.

It picks up mentions in blog posts, forums, Twitter and Facebook. When you go into this tool, you can see when someone mentioned your brand within a Facebook Page or blog. You can also get email alerts.

It’s a really powerful tool to have and essential for a marketer to be able to track what’s going on.

You’ll learn about what’s included for free and when you might need to upgrade.

Ian shares how he uses Mention.net for his business and how it helps with the interaction of people who talk about your product.

You’ll discover the difference between Mention.net and Google Alerts and why you’ll have to replace your Google Alerts with something else.

You can replace Google Alerts with Talkwalker Alerts. It’s free, but it doesn’t do Facebook or Twitter alerts.

talkwalker alerts Talkwalker is an alternative to Google Alerts.

Tools that support sentiment analysis can be quite expensive.  You’ll hear about the social media management tool Viralheat that is not that expensive but it supports sentiment analysis.

Ian believes that although people don’t want to have a dozen tools on their desktop, at present they have no choice. However, there’s a tool to watch called SumAll which aims to bring all of the analytics under one platform.

Listen to the show to find out about how tools are being brought together and why there are going to be more and more acquisitions.

Tips on how to make better use of Google Analytics 

Ian says that Google Analytics is brilliant and sometimes we forget how good it is. You need to set up goals and spend time with it. If you don’t have any goals within Google Analytics, you’re missing out.

For example, you could set up a goal to track when someone signs up to your email database through your website or when someone signs up for a trial of your product.

With Google Analytics, you can break it down further when you want to find out how many people came to your site and how many converted. Google Analytics shows you how many conversions came from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

google dashboard edited Check out your conversion rates with Google Analytics.

It’s a great way to learn which is the most beneficial piece of social activity and what platform you should work on.

You’ll hear how we do this at Social Media Examiner and what social platform outperformed the others. It’s definitely worth a look, as traffic sources alone aren’t sufficient.

There’s a lot of data in Google Analytics and it can sometimes be too much. Ian recommends building custom dashboards to pick out the most interesting pieces of information relevant to your business.

There are sites online that have dashboards already created, that you can just add to your own analytics.

koozai This blog post is a great resource for dashboards that you can use.

Listen to the show to hear why Ian is more interested in conversion than traffic and you’ll find out what’s one of the highest conversion rates for him.

I recently discovered a cool widget by Twitter called the Search Widget.

create a twitter search widget This search widget allows you to add any public Twitter timeline to your website.

It allows you to put in a search query; for example, a hashtag, keyword or even Twitter ID. These tweets will show up in a little box that you can then embed just about anywhere on the page.

If you decide to use this plugin, make sure you check Opt-out of tailoring Twitter. When you check this box, it will make sure that you don’t see Twitter ads or irrelevant content inside this Twitter stream.

You’ll discover how we use it at Social Media Examiner and why it’s great for social proof.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

This week’s callers both ask questions related to the launch of a new product or service.

John, who’s the founder of a new website called CurbsideMe (a survey tool for doctors) asks, “I’ve noticed that you have a fan base of thousands of listeners and followers, to which you begin your broadcast or launch efforts. What advice would you give to people like myself or others who only have an audience in the 100s through friends, colleagues or some other contacts about launching on a smaller scale for us to get to the point that you are at?”

curbside me CurbsideMe website.

Courtney Miller, the host of a brand-new podcast called The Hollywood Dance Career Show, asks, “I’m launching a brand-new website, podcast, Facebook Page, Twitter account and YouTube channel. Right now none of it exists. I currently have about 5,000 people who are on my personal Facebook Page. So in keeping with the theme of launching, I’m trying to figure out the right steps.”

hollywood dance career The Hollywood Dance Career website.

If you want to know how to get a following and how you can become successful, I will introduce you to a quick concept called the Elevation Principle. It’s very simple.

Great Content + Other People – Marketing Messages = Growth

The core of the strategy is to have good content.

In your case, Courtney, you have a podcast coming out that will be driven by a blog. John, you should start a blog. Both of you create content that is educational and addresses the interests of your ideal audience. It will be a great step in the right direction.

Start to share great content with your friends, peers and colleagues and ask them for their thoughts and opinions. You can also ask if they know of anybody who might be interested as well.

You’ll also learn how to make the right connections and discover different ways to build relationships.

When people visit your blog, make sure you have the Facebook and Twitter widgets there, so people can just go ahead and click a button and become a fan or follower. You also want to have an email opt-in list.

Take a look at My Kids’ Adventures to see what we’ve done. You can get a free chapter of my book Launch, which talks about the Elevation Principle in detail.

Call in and leave your social media–related questions for us and we may include them in a future show.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

Social Media Success Summit 2013

Social Media Success Summit 2013 is a special online conference designed to help you master social media marketing (brought to you by Social Media Examiner).

Social Media Success Summit 2013.

Forty-five of the world’s leading social media pros will show you how. Instructors include Jay Baer (author, Youtility), Chris Brogan (co-author, Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner), Mark Schaefer (author, Return on Influence), Jesse Stay (author, Google+ for Dummies), Amy Porterfield (co-author, Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies) and experts from General Electric, Sony, E! Online, Kelly Services and Discovery Channel–just to mention a few. Fully online. Click here to learn more.

Ways to subscribe to the Social Media Marketing podcast:

What do you think? What are your thoughts on these social media tools? Please leave your comments below.

Avatar of About the Author, Michael Stelzner

Michael Stelzner is the founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner, and author of the books Launch and Writing White Papers. He’s also the host of the Social Media Marketing podcast. Other posts by Michael Stelzner »

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August 15, 2013

4 Examples of Excellent Twitter Customer Service

By Rachel Sprung
Published August 1, 2013 Printer-Friendly

social media how toDo you use Twitter to stay connected with your customers?

Have you integrated Twitter into your customer service strategy?

Would you like to know which companies are doing this best?

Gone are the days when people would call up a company and complain.

Now, people are more likely to head to their smartphones or computers to tell the world how terrible a product or service is.

That’s why customer service is becoming increasingly important on social media platforms like Twitter.

A study done by Simply Measured showed that 99% of brands are on Twitter, and 30% of them have a dedicated customer service handle. The average response time was 5.1 hours with 10% of companies answering within an hour, and 93% of companies answering within 48 hours.

Here are 4 companies with exceptional customer service on Twitter and key takeaways to help you improve how your customers perceive your company on Twitter.

Airline delays are one of the most common causes of customer frustration. Not only do delays happen often, but also people are pretty vocal about their feelings when their flight is delayed.

Acknowledging this, @JetBlue ensures they’re responsive to their customers because they understand it’s important for continued customer loyalty. Not only do they engage with happy customers, but they also respond to and help frustrated customers as quickly as possible.

jetblue tweet JetBlue assisting a frustrated customer.

Sure, a lot of airlines do this now. What makes JetBlue stand out from its competitors?

JetBlue is known to be extremely responsive to customers mentioning their brand. Whether they send a public @reply or a private DM to answer a question, they are quick to interact. As seen in the picture above, they reached out to their frustrated customer within the hour.

Key takeaway: Respond quickly.

Twitter is a channel where customers expect quick responses. As a result, you’ll likely want to respond to mentions and inquiries quickly. Many companies dedicate full-time employees to the task of responding to customers and potential customers on Twitter. Make sure you have a social media plan in place to satisfy customers.

You might also want to consider having a plan in place for crises or when the volume of inquiries on Twitter are higher than expected. For example, in JetBlue’s case, bad weather may require that others from the company step in and help with the demand.

@NikeSupport is a prime example of customer service done well. They constantly respond to followers on Twitter, whether it’s about their apparel, Fuel Band or other products. Every few minutes, you can watch them respond to someone new.

What makes this remarkable? Nike is a huge company. They have many different types of sports equipment and lines of apparel that make up their brand. While Nike manages a number of Twitter handles to accommodate followers interested in specific sports or store locations, @NikeSupport is dedicated solely to responding to customers who need help.

As you can see from the images below, Nike Support has tweeted over 160K times, whereas the Nike handle has only tweeted around 11K times.

nike twitter Nike Twitter handle.nike support Nike Support Twitter handle.

Key takeaway: Make it easy.

While creating your social media strategy, think about your customers and how you can make getting help easy for them. Remember, in addition to losing a customer through poor customer service, you can also lose customers when you make things too complicated.

By having a single Twitter handle dedicated to answering all customer service questions, you make the lives of your customers much easier. It’s all about customer delight!

It is no longer a 9-5 world—especially when it comes to social media—and some companies need to be available at all hours.

Seamless is an online food ordering service that serves customers in several time zones across the United States and in London. There’s always someone ordering food and eating, right?

In addition to engaging customers through trivia questions with prizes of free food, they also provide customer service around the clock.

seamless tweet twitter customer service Seamless responds to an issue at 10:50 AM.seamless tweet twitter customer service Seamless responds to an issue at 4:46 PM.

Key takeaway: Manage your presence.

Consider your business model. Are there specific times of the day or night you need to be available? Should you be available at all hours? If you set automatic tweets throughout the night, do you also need to respond to replies and questions? You want to carefully consider the hours you are present on Twitter and be there when you’re needed. Global companies need to satisfy customers who are in the same city as the headquarters, as well as customers who are halfway across the globe.

While speed of response is important, many companies underestimate the importance of quality assistance. A quick response that isn’t helpful can be as good as no response at all. In the case of Comcast, their customers are looking for specific help to fix their problems. If their wireless Internet isn’t working, they want to know how to fix it. If their television connection is out, they want to know how to repair whatever is broken.

To provide each customer with a timely and helpful response, Comcast’s Twitter account is managed by a team of people who can quickly offer technical support and troubleshooting tactics for a variety of issues.

comcastcares twitter customer service @ComcastCares responds to issue.

Key takeaway: Provide appropriate knowledge.

If your customers are likely to contact you with technical issues, it may make sense to staff your Twitter team with knowledgeable personnel who can answer technical questions quickly and accurately.

Give careful consideration to who is answering the questions your customers are asking on Twitter.

Integrate Customer Service Into Your Company’s Social Accounts

These examples show how to use Twitter to cultivate loyalty by providing timely and helpful responses to customers.

Adopt similar tactics to improve your customers’ experience of your company on Twitter. Consider dedicating one person, even part time, to addressing customers’ questions on Twitter. Track the outcome to see whether you should expand the program.

What do you think? Do you provide customer service on Twitter? What results have you seen? Please leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Avatar of About the Author, Rachel Sprung

Rachel Sprung is the Marketing Associate, Brand Experiences in the Marketing department at HubSpot. Her responsibilities include managing the company’s brand presence at external events. Other posts by Rachel Sprung »

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August 14, 2013

17 Ways Marketers Can Leverage Facebook Graph Search

By Christian Karasiewicz
Published July 22, 2013 Printer-Friendly

social media how toAre you using Facebook Graph Search as a marketing power tool?

If you knew more about your Facebook fans, how would that improve your marketing efforts?

Marketers can now use Facebook Graph Search to perform focused searches that will return better, more accurate search results that can be of real use to your business.

With Graph Search, you can do much more than meets the eye.

Facebook Page owners can use Graph Search to:

Identify their own fansLearn about favorite interests and hobbies of fansIdentify employees of a business who have liked a business’s Facebook PageIdentify interests of competitors’ fansIdentify potential business partnershipsImprove the quality of Facebook contestsfacebook search query Examples of Facebook search queries.

To help you dig deeper into what Facebook Graph Search can do for you, here are 17 ways you can use Facebook Graph Search queries to improve your Facebook marketing.

Note: To use these Graph Search query examples in your own searches, replace the bold text in all caps with the Facebook Page, location, etc., that you’re looking for.

Here’s an easy way to grow your personal network on Facebook by connecting with people you know from work.

Graph Search will show you people who aren’t your friends who like a particular Page.

This can help you find colleagues whom you’ve met but haven’t connected with on Facebook and grow your personal network. Remember that your friend request should always include a note that helps your colleague place you with where you met—an experience, a conference, etc.

Facebook Search Query: People who are not my friend who like PAGE NAME example fans not friends Example of people who are not my friends who like Mashable.

Here are two searches you can use to build your Page audience.

While you can go to your Facebook Page, click on See Likes and spend hours searching for your individual friends who like your Page, Facebook Graph Search offers an easier, quicker way to identify them.

Compare the results of this query with your friends list to target friends who haven’t liked your Page with a personalized message to invite them to check your Page out.

Facebook Search Query: My friends who like PAGE NAME facebook friend fans The old way of identifying your friends who like a particular Facebook Page.facebook page fans The new way of identifying friends who like a particular Facebook Page.

Search for groups of people who have an interest related to your business Page and join a relevant group to interact with.

The basic rules of participating in groups apply here, so don’t blast everyone with self-promotional links. Be helpful, and if it’s appropriate in the context of a conversation, share a link to your Page with the group at large, which will grow your fan base.

Facebook Search Query: Groups of people who like TOPIC and like PAGE NAME groups who like mexican food Example of groups of people who like Mexican food and also like the Christian Karasiewicz Facebook Page.

Here are a few searches to help you learn more about your fans. Use this information in your communication and provide more value to them.

Learn more about your fans without asking them to complete a survey.

If you find that a large number of your fans also like traveling, you can integrate related content into your editorial calendar.

Facebook Search Query: Favorite interests of people who like PAGE NAME people who like pf changs Examples of interests of people who like the P.F. Chang’s Facebook Page.

Identify other pages your fans like to learn about new types of content you could share to keep fans coming back to your own Facebook Page.

Facebook Search Query: Pages liked by people who like PAGE NAME

You can add additional pages to this search query by adding “and PAGE NAME” to the search query.

Facebook Search Query: Pages liked by people who like PAGE NAME and PAGE NAME facebook fans social media examiner Facebook Pages that fans of Social Media Examiner like.

Locate the influencers in your fan base and search the Pages they like to learn about the other brands and businesses that influence them.

Facebook Search Query: Pages liked by PERSON or PAGE christian karasiewicz fans Example of pages I like.

Are you interested in delving deeper? Here’s a search to help you discover more opportunities.

Quickly find out which of your fans also like related Facebook Pages.

Query fans who like your Page and the Pages of events or conferences. Narrow the next cycle of your presentation pitches to events or conferences with Pages that share a high percentage of your fan base.

Facebook Search Query: Fans of PAGE NAME 1 and PAGE NAME 2 fan comparison A comparison of fans of one Facebook Page who also like another Page.

Use these two searches to help you discover potential new customers.

If your business is in close proximity to a company or business, you can use Graph Search to find out which employees of that business like services or products related to yours.

Use the commonalities that are revealed to run a Targeted Facebook ad or create Facebook check-in deals to entice them to try out your establishment.

Facebook Search Query: People who work at PLACE and like SOMETHING work at dell like chinese food Example of people who work at Dell who also like Chinese restaurants.

Create different combinations of queries to learn more about the topics that interest your fans, the fans of colleagues or the fans of competitors.

A blog that hosts guest authors can use the search results to promote a guest author’s post using Facebook ad targeting.

This will improve your ad targeting and ensure you’re reaching the right Facebook fans with your Facebook ads.

Facebook Search Query: Favorite interests of people who like PAGE NAME 1 and PAGE NAME 2 interests people like social media examiner and mari smith Example of interests of people who like Social Media Examiner and Mari Smith on Facebook.

This search can give you the insights you need to improve your brand loyalty.

Find out where your customers do business when they aren’t doing business with you so you can focus your loyalty campaign.

Facebook Search Query: TYPE OF BUSINESS in LOCATION visited by people who like PAGE NAME restaurants in orlando and like toojay restaurant Example of restaurants located in Orlando, Florida visited by people who like TooJay’s restaurant.

Are you interested in learning more about what your fans like? These searches can help you find out more.

Prizes are an important part of any promotion. If the prize doesn’t appeal to your audience, your promotion will get very little play.

Search for the movies, music, sports teams, etc., that appeal most to your fans and choose a contest prize that’s sure to pull entries.

Facebook Search Query: Movies liked by people who like PAGE NAMEFacebook Search Query: Favorite music of people who like PAGE NAMEFacebook Search Query: Sports teams of people who like PAGE NAME people who like amc theatres Examples of movies liked by people who like AMC Theaters.

Another way to make sure you have the right promotion prize is to find out which products will most interest a specific gender set within your Facebook fans by researching the other brand Pages they like.

Facebook Search Query: Pages liked by GENDER who like PAGE NAME paula deen fans Example of Pages liked by women who like Paula Deen.

Identify the average age of your own fans in your Facebook Insights and use it to find prizes or incentives that will appeal to a specific age demographic within your fan base.

Facebook Search Query: Pages liked by people over the age of NUMBER who like PAGE NAME fans who like christian karasiewicz over 40 Search results for pages liked by people over 40 who also like the Christian Karasiewicz Facebook Page.

Here’s how you can discover which games your fans play on Facebook.

Before you build an app for a specific audience, find out what type of games have been most successful with them in the past to save valuable time and resources.

Facebook Search Query: Games played by fans of PAGE NAME games played by fans of amex Facebook Graph Search query showing games played by fans of American Express.

Are you interested in location marketing? Here’s an interesting search to use.

If your business is located near museums and places that get lots of visitors such as the Washington Monument, make sure your business shows up when someone searches for businesses near them.

If you don’t show up under this query, run a Facebook ad that mentions the landmark or offer a check-in deal that will appeal to visitors who are close by.

Facebook Search Query: Places near PLACE visited by people who like SOME ATTRACTION places near washington dc like washington monument Example of places near Washington DC that were visited by people who like the Washington Monument.

Do you want to identify potential brand ambassadors? You’ll find these searches useful.

You can quickly identify fans of a specific age or from a specific region and reach out to them on behalf of your brand for help in sharing promotions, product launches, etc.

Facebook Search Query: Fans of PAGE NAME over the age of NUMBERFacebook Search Query: Fans of PAGE NAME who live in COUNTRY over 50 fans like metamucil Example of fans over the age of 50 who like Metamucil.

While there are certainly a lot of different search queries, remember you can combine queries to produce more detailed results.

Instead of using the basic query of ‘Fans who like PAGE NAME’, you can add terms to find the right fans you’re looking for.

Here’s an example of an improved Facebook Search Query: Fans who like PAGE NAME who live in STATE and are over the age of NUMBER.

combined search query Example of a combined search query for fans of Apple who live in California and are over the age of 32.

The Wrap-up

While Facebook search queries will identify traits of fans and Pages, there are a few things to remember.

Facebook Graph Search doesn’t work on mobile (yet).You can’t sort the results of a search query.Facebook profile privacy settings can limit some results.

There are literally hundreds of possible search combinations and the information returned from them can be used to help you learn about your fans, improve your Facebook ad targeting, do market research and even create contests that your fans are more interested in.

One last thing.

Don’t forget that you can delete your Facebook Graph Search history if your searches yield no results.

What do you think? Have you used Graph Search queries? How have they helped you improve your Facebook marketing? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Avatar of About the Author, Christian Karasiewicz

Christian Karasiewicz is a social media marketing professional who helps Fortune 500 businesses, athletes, and musicians to develop digital marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. Follow him on Twitter @ckroks. Other posts by Christian Karasiewicz »

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August 14, 2013

Infographic: Should Your Business Be On Pinterest?

This decision tree from Zoom Creates Blogs is a great tool for businesses to decide whether or not they have the resources and should invest the time and energy in building a Pinterest strategy. It’s a beautiful infographic and very practical. If your business decides not to develop its own Pinterest strategy, though, it doesn’t mean you can’t piggyback on other people’s boards! Some of our clients sponsor and work with successful Pinterest board operators to share information and it works fantastic.

As with any social media site, it is important to educate yourself on the platform, learning what is involved in being a truly active member and how much time it would take to maintain your profile. Not all businesses are right for Pinterest. You need figure out if your offerings and capabilities are compatible for the site and then build a solid strategy before you make the leap. Joining any social media site takes time, effort and, in the case of Pinterest, awesome imagery and great content. So, is your business ready to make the commitment?

Zoom Creates Blogs asks and details the responses to four key questions when deciding whether or not your business should invest in a Pinterest presence?

Can you stay active on Pinterest?Do you have visually engaging imagery, or can you create it?Is your target audience using Pinterest?Do you have more to share than just what you do?

If you decide to move forward, I’d highly recommend Karen Leland‘s book Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business. Karen sent us a copy and – yes – that’s our affiliate link.

Should-your-business-join-Pinterest-1

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August 14, 2013

5 Steps to Ensure Your WordPress Blog Is Secure

By Marko Saric
Published July 4, 2013 Printer-Friendly

social media how toIs your WordPress blog safe from malicious people?

Would you like to make your WordPress blog more secure?

Most often, people don’t think about security measures until it’s too late. But there are some simple steps you can take to keep your blog safe.

A blog that has been hacked can suffer from loss of content, stolen data and expensive downtime. Maintaining the security of your blog helps you protect your reputation and provide your visitors with the best service possible.

Because WordPress is such a popular platform for blogging, it’s a regular target for hacking attacks launched by people who find and exploit weaknesses and vulnerabilities in websites.

Here are 5 simple security measures that you should implement on your business blog today to protect it from hacking attacks.

Hackers look for blogs that use the default WordPress admin username because it’s half of the information they need to gain entry to your blog. When you use “Admin” as your username, you save the hacker a lot of time. All they’d need to do next is to figure out your password. Once that happens, they can enter your blog and do whatever they want.

The first step in making your blog secure is to create a new user profile for yourself and delete the default admin username. This makes it more difficult for someone to hack into your business blog.

To create a new username profile, open the WordPress admin navigation, go into Users and click on Add New.

role of administrator Create a new user profile and change the role to administrator.

Fill in your details and make sure to give yourself the role of an administrator so you have the ability to make any necessary changes on your blog. After your new username is created, log out of your WordPress dashboard and log back in with your new user details.

Go back into Users and delete the default admin user. At this stage, WordPress gives you the option to transfer the posts authored by the admin user to your new user profile; choose that and you won’t lose any of your content or data.

No matter how much awareness is raised around the danger of using a simple password, many people continue to use simple passwords that are easy for them to remember. Unfortunately, this also makes those passwords easier to crack.

It’s important that you use a strong and secure password. It should be a minimum of eight characters long with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters.

To change your WordPress password to a stronger character string, go into Users and choose Your Profile. At the bottom of that page, fill in the New Password fields.

adding new password WordPress interface for adding a new password.

Make this a requirement for every member of your blogging team as each login password presents a potential gateway for hackers to try to enter.

In response to security vulnerabilities, the WordPress software, themes and plugins are regularly updated with the latest patches and fixes.

When a WordPress update is available, you’ll see a prominent notification across the top of your dashboard.

new update available You’ll see a yellow notification banner across the top of your WordPress dashboard when there’s a new update available for you to install.

Updating is a simple 1-click process in your dashboard so you won’t need to leave your browser or do any manual uploading via FTP.

Backing up your database is an important part of keeping your blog secure.

WordPress makes the backup process simple with both free and paid options. WP-DB-Backup, a free option, is one of the most downloaded WordPress backup plugins and is a simple solution for beginners.

To install WP-DB-Backup, go into Plugins and choose Add New. Type “WP-DB-Backup” in the search box. Click Install Now and then click OK.

new plugin It’s easy to find and install a plugin to back up your blog. Under Plugins, click Add New and search for WP-DB-Backup or another backup plugin.

From the Plugins screen, Activate the plugin.

After the plugin has been activated, you’ll have a new addition to your navigation in Tools named Backup. From Backup, you can either back up your database immediately or you can set the backup to occur on a regular schedule. The backup files can be downloaded to your hard drive or sent to your server via email.

backup options WP-DB-Backup gives you the option to save to server, download or email.

You’ll appreciate knowing you always have an up-to-date backup of your blog in the event something does happen.

The Limit Login Attempts plugin is especially useful in helping to repel brute-force hacker attacks by blocking access to the login page after a series of incorrect login attempts have been made. As administrator, you decide how many login attempts to allow before the plugin launches the block.

Install this plugin by going into Plugins and choosing Add New, just as you did to find the WP-DB-Backup mentioned above.

This time, search for “Limit Login Attempts,” click Install and then OK. Activate the plugin from the Plugins screen and you will have a new Limit Login Attempts option in your Settings.

To set the number of allowable login attempts and other limits, click on Limit Login Attempts, fill in the options and click on Change Options to save your work.

login attempts plugin Limit Login Attempts plugin settings in your WordPress dashboard.

Bonus Tip: Here’s one last tip to help keep your blog safe. Remember to research any plugins you are interested in. This is one tactic used by others to try to attack your blog. So only install plugins from reputable sources and check the reviews on WordPress.org.

Keep your business blog safe.

These are five things you can quickly put in place to help make your business blog more secure. They will go a long way in protecting your blog from the majority of hacking attempts and give your blog more security than many of the other blogs published today.

What do you think? How often do you think about the security of your blog? What other precautions do you recommend to keep a blog safe? Write your comments and questions in the box below.

Avatar of About the Author, Marko Saric

Marko Saric is a bloger at HowToMakeMyBlog.com, a site that teaches you everything you need to know on starting a blog and making it a success. Other posts by Marko Saric »

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August 13, 2013

Six Ways to Grow a LinkedIn Group: Tips From the Pros

By Cindy King
Published August 7, 2013 Printer-Friendly

social media how toAre you part of a LinkedIn group that has stalled?

Do you want to create a LinkedIn group?

LinkedIn groups can be a great way to network with your customers, peers and other professionals in your industry.

But it can be challenging to grow your group and get the people you want to join and participate in the discussions.

We asked the pros to share their best tips to grow your LinkedIn groups.

Follow these tips and you’ll find it easier to create the type of community you’re looking for.

viveka von rosen Viveka Von Rosen

You’ll need to send out invitations to get your contacts to join your LinkedIn group and LinkedIn has a form for you to do this.

The default LinkedIn message that’s sent when you fill out the form below is: “Subject: Name invites you to join Group” and “Welcome Message: I would like to invite you to join my group on LinkedIn.” Unfortunately this has about 1% chance of getting someone to your group.

linkedin tweetchat participants Standard LinkedIn group invitations can be boring. (Note the link field at the bottom gives you the link to your group. Copy this and create a custom URL for your group to use in your email invitations.)

Let’s face it. There’s enough noise out there. If you want to get someone to join your group, you need to give them a good reason. Instead of using the standard LinkedIn invitation, use email to craft the kind of message that will get your contacts to join your LinkedIn group.

In my opinion, the person who does this best is Jill Konrath. She has created a beautifully branded email that she sends out to her email list. It not only shares the link, but some of the reasons you might want to join her group, Fresh Sales Strategies.

linkedin group 2 Jill Konrath’s well-branded email gives you reasons to join her group.

Let’s take a look at how this works.

Use email to invite your prospective members. This allows you to expand beyond your LinkedIn network. For those of you who only want to invite your LinkedIn connections, you’ll want to create an external contact list:

But why would you limit it to just your LinkedIn members? Invite your whole mailing list if relevant!

Brand your email with your website and LinkedIn group branding. Be sure to use a clear call to action, such as “Join Now.”

Lead with the WIIFM (What’s in it for me?). Be very clear on what your group has to offer. What are the benefits to the user? Tell your contacts what they’ll get by joining your LinkedIn group and make sure this aligns with your business’s marketing message.

LinkedIn group URLs are not easy to remember. Create a customized group URL (http://Bit.ly/join-the-group) that’s easy to use and remember and use this in your email invitations.

Send a simple, elegant invitation via email to relevant lists and you’re sure to see your LinkedIn group grow in size.

Viveka Von Rosen, author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day and is known internationally as the “LinkedIn Expert.”

mike delgado Mike Delgado

One of the keys to help you grow a successful LinkedIn group is to get new members engaged with you and your community quickly.

You can jump-start the engagement process by auto-sending an email asking new members to make a quick introduction to everyone. Make it really simple to do this and provide a link that goes right to your LinkedIn group URL.

Setting up an auto-send email for new members is very easy. Once logged into your group, click on the “Manage” link at the top, then click on the “Templates” link on the left sidebar. Make sure the Auto-send box is checked and click on Edit Template to compose your message.

auto send edit template It’s easy to set up an auto-send email for new members.

Remember to keep your message quick and easy to read, with a URL to drive them to your group.

Here’s a simple template you could use to encourage new members to start engaging.

welcome message Use a simple template to get new members to engage.

Another tip to boost engagement with members is to make sure you connect with them after they’ve joined your LinkedIn group. This will ensure you can engage with them in the LinkedIn stream too.

Mike Delgado, author of circled.us and the social media community manager at Experian.

kristi hines Kristi Hines

If you want a successful group on LinkedIn that benefits your business, then be sure to take advantage of the ability to email members.

Remember that you can email your members once a week using the Send Announcement option. Give these emails thought and turn your LinkedIn group members into leads for your business. For example, you might want to offer free content downloads and webinars related to the theme of your group on a regular basis.

subscribe via email Customize your email message before you send it to new members. Image source: iStockphoto

If your group is open to the public, include a line in your welcome email and regular announcements and ask members to spread the word about the group to help it to grow. You can even include a tweet for people to share by using ClickToTweet to create a custom tweet that members can share with their followers that includes a link to your group.

Kristi Hines, freelance writer, ghostwriter and author of Kikolani.

linda coles Linda Coles

It’s not as easy to build a LinkedIn group as it is to build a Facebook Page. LinkedIn is used as a business tool and so is probably mainly used during work hours. Facebook is a form of entertainment and is used at all hours. The messages you receive from both of these platforms are very different.

Without the availability of cute inspirational picture quotes, your LinkedIn group content needs to be both useful and worthy of a discussion. So how do you know what will work and what won’t? The answer is trial and error—but very often it’s just the simple things that get the most traction.

Try to talk about something that will resonate with your audience or pull on an emotional string in some way. Members may have had an experience of a similar nature to share. People love to tell their own stories and others like to listen.

question marks with speech bubbles Share discussion topics that resonate with your audience and spark conversation. Image source: iStockphoto

Remember also that not everyone in the group will click Like or leave a comment. There are also the voyeurs who are watching, listening and learning from those who are taking part. Just like your blog visitors, very few actually commit to take action, but they are there just the same, so keep posting!

Focus on creating discussions and members will want to come back and participate.

Linda Coles, founder of Blue Banana.

stephanie sammons Stephanie Sammons

When you build a LinkedIn group, it can create a number of benefits for your company. For example, a LinkedIn group can position your company as an industry leader and also serve as a pipeline of potential leads for your business.

My best tip for building a successful LinkedIn group is to go niche. When you focus on a specific target audience for your LinkedIn group, magical things can happen.

As the old saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together.” Chances are, the members of your target market are already connected to people who are just like them on LinkedIn and other social networks.

target audience Focus on a specific target audience and encourage connections among them. Image source: iStockphoto

As they join your group, their connections have the potential to see this activity, which is essentially a peer endorsement of your group. Additionally, you can enlist industry influencers to become advocates for your group.

These group advocates can help recruit members using their online influence, and they can also serve as discussion leaders to engage your members.

A more obvious benefit of focusing on a niche target market is that they’re likely to have similar needs and goals. You can create engaging discussions within your group that will increase participation when you focus on the needs, questions, concerns and issues that your members are collectively facing.

It’s much easier to come up with discussion ideas and content to share inside of your group when you understand the needs, issues and concerns of your specific target market!

When you focus on a specific niche for building your LinkedIn group, you can run targeted ads to promote your group within LinkedIn. For example, if you were targeting “financial advisors” for your LinkedIn group, you can run promotional ads within LinkedIn that target the job title “financial advisor” to get your group promotion ads in front of the right LinkedIn members.

Building a high-quality LinkedIn group is a long-term process and requires hands-on management, but you will get there much more quickly if you go niche with your LinkedIn group building efforts!

Stephanie Sammons, founder and CEO of Wired Advisor.

melonie dodaro Melonie Dodaro

It’s important to choose the right name for your LinkedIn group. The name you choose can have an impact on how easy it is for others to find your group.

Before you decide on the name for your LinkedIn group, identify your goal for setting up a group. For example, are you looking to create a networking group for people within your industry or do you want to create a group for your ideal clients? Determining your goal is essential in ensuring that you select the right name for your group.

You’ll want to make sure the name you select targets the specific people you’re looking to attract. If you want to attract people from a specific geographic area, include the name of the city or area in your group name. For example, if your target market is businesspeople in San Diego, you may want to name your group San Diego Business Networking Group. It’s also important to have a custom logo made for your group to ensure it looks professional.

linkedin group logo It’s important to have a custom logo for your group.

Select a name with the keywords that people would use when searching for groups on LinkedIn. This will ensure your group shows up in the search results. By doing this, you’ll see a lot more organic growth for your group.

Melonie Dodaro is recognized as Canada’s #1 LinkedIn expert and is the founder of Top Dog Social Media, a company that helps businesses leverage the power of social media.

Social Media Examiner hosts the Social Media Marketing Networking Club on LinkedIn.

This is a LinkedIn group for marketers and business owners to network, learn and make connections. You’ll find discussions around the best ways to use social media tools to help your business.

We’ll strive to provide a safe environment where everyone is welcome to interact without spam, harassment, inflammatory or obscene remarks, prejudice or other nonsense. Join our LinkedIn group.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these tips above? Have you got any LinkedIn group tips you’d like to share? Please share your comments below.

Avatar of About the Author, Cindy King

Cindy King is the director of editorial for Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts by Cindy King »

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August 13, 2013

Infographic: Responsive Design, Getting it Right

According to Wikipedia, responsive design is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones). Responsive design is becoming very popular since it doesn’t require the designer to generate multiple interfaces to a site for mobile, tablet and desktop. Responsive design utilizes the latest HTML and CSS methodologies to automatically adjust the design to the viewport.

It’s all about keeping the features visitors want, and none of the things they don’t. There’s no room for clunky graphics, confusing navigation, or pages locked into desktop-only resolutions. Mobile users want their Internet lean, clean, and sized for their screen.

Responsive design requires an experienced web designer with knowledge of the technologies and pre-planning for optimizing the viewing and navigation experience of the site. It’s also appreciated by search engines and is starting to put quite a bit of distance between old-school site design and the latest and greatest designs. WhoIsHostingThis has put together this informative infographic on responsive design and the checklist for a successful implementation.

responsive-design-infographic

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August 12, 2013

Facebook Embedded Posts: This Week in Social Media

By Cindy King
Published August 3, 2013 Printer-Friendly

social media researchWelcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

Facebook Introduces Embedded Posts: Facebook’s Embedded Posts “make it possible for people to bring the most compelling, timely public posts from Facebook to the rest of the web.”

new embeddable facebook posts “When embedded, posts can include pictures, videos, hashtags and other content. People can also like and share the post directly from the embed.”

LinkedIn Introduces New Company Page Analytics: The new LinkedIn Company Page analytics now include the ability to identify the updates that drive the greatest engagement and filter engagement trends by type and time period.

Pinterest Releases a Pinning Shortcut: Pinterest’s updated version of their iPhone and iPad app gives you “a shortcut that lets you pin, like and send a little faster on your iPhone.”

pinterest mobile update “You can try the shortcut when you’re on your home feed, a board or looking at a pin close up.”

Facebook Offers New Advice for Businesses: The revamped “Facebook for Business” service makes it “easier for advertisers to discover how to achieve goals through Facebook, whether it’s to drive in-store sales, launch a new product or simply build awareness of the app.”

new facebook for business update “Facebook has worked to make advertising simpler and more accessible.”

Pinterest Rolls Out New Features: Pinterest’s new features “help you see more pins you love, and fewer you don’t. Use the Edit Your Home Feed button to get your feed just how you want it, from the web or your phone. Go to Follow Boards to see stuff you might like based on what you’ve been pinning.”

pinterest edit button Pinterest introduces a new Edit button.

Pinterest Emails You When Product Pin Prices Drop: “You don’t have to do anything to get notified. Just keep pinning the things you’re into, and leave the price watching to Pinterest.”

pinterest price update “There are already tens of millions of pins with price details on them.” Now Pinterest will email you when prices drop.

Here’s an interesting infographic worth noting:

Marketers Pick Their Social Media Channels of Choice:

social business “Social media marketing is becoming a more useful tool for both B2B and B2C businesses.”

Don’t miss this:

Social Media Success Summit 2013 is a special online conference designed to help you master social media marketing (brought to you by Social Media Examiner).

Social Media Success Summit 2013.

Forty-five of the world’s leading social media pros will show you how. Instructors include Jay Baer (author, Youtility), Chris Brogan (co-author, Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing), Michael Stelzner (founder, Social Media Examiner), Mark Schaefer (author, Return on Influence), Jesse Stay (author, Google+ for Dummies), Amy Porterfield (co-author, Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies) and experts from General Electric, Sony, E! Online, Kelly Services and Discovery Channel–just to mention a few. Fully online. Click here to learn more.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

Avatar of About the Author, Cindy King

Cindy King is the director of editorial for Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts by Cindy King »

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